The Washington Post’s neologism contest winners.

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The Washington Post’s neologism contest winners.

December 2, 2019July 21, 2023 1967

I came across this today and broke up laughing. These are seriously clever! Thanks to the Washington Post. I wasn’t aware of their neologism contest, but I am now! Read and enjoy. Pass it along.

There are three primal urges in human beings: Food, sex, and rewriting someone else’s play.

Romulus Linney

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.

Matthew Arnold

My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it.

Ernest Hemingway

Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk — away from any open flames — to remind yourself that if you don’t write daily, you will get rusty.

George Singleton

If you haven’t got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you’ll only have to throw away the first three pages.

William C. Gault

Socially, a journalist fits in somewhere between a whore and a bartender. But spiritually he stands beside Galileo. He knows the world is round.

Sherman Reilly Duffy

A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.

Harlan Ellison

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

Robert A. Heinlein

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

Thomas Jefferson

When writing a novel, that’s pretty much entirely what life turns into: “House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1,500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.”

Neil Gaiman

If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it.

Stan Lee

I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.

Tom Clancy

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.

Stephen Wright

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.

Edward Albee

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.

Robert Benchley

In Hollywood, the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

Will Rogers

If you start with a bang, you won’t end with a whimper.